


Luke Skywalker? I'm Here to Rescue You

by LullabyKnell



Series: Star Wars Episode LK [6]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Character Study, Fix-It, Forgiveness, Gen, Gen Work, Headcanon, Headcanon Application, Introspection, Jedi Luke Skywalker, Moving On, Near Death Experiences, No Kylo Ren Redemption, No Romance, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, One Shot, POV Luke Skywalker, POV Third Person, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Self-Indulgent, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 00:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: Luke can’t give up on his nephew. He didn’t give up on his father, who committed unspeakable evil, and he can’t give up on Ben. Not the boy he held as a newborn, not the boy he helped raise alongside Han and Leia, not the boy that he helped teach to fly and fix ships, and not the young man he came to have such hopes for.There’s good in him, Luke knows it. He’s seen it.~ An alternate character interpretation and character study for Luke Skywalker in TFA and TLJ ~





	Luke Skywalker? I'm Here to Rescue You

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't like Luke Skywalker's characterization in TLJ, so I wrote this. (Luke “*throws away his lightsaber in the face of the damn Emperor* I am a Jedi… like my father before me” Skywalker, y'know?) This also covers Rey and Kylo Ren, a little bit (separately! I don't ship it), and goes over an alternate interpretation of Luke and Kylo Ren's history using TFA. If I continue being angry, I might try and write various characterization, character development, and character arc fix-its. (Finn.) I might not, I don't know. (Also Poe.) Please keep in mind that I have read no Star Wars novelizations, no books, and no comics.
> 
> I'm not here to argue. If you really liked TLJ, this fic is probably not for you. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

 Something happens. Luke doesn’t instigate it, though. It’s Ben. Ben crosses a line, one those lines that once crossed, you don’t know what to do because you’re not the one who can forgive your loved one for that. He says something that can’t be unheard. He does something that can’t be ignored. Something thoughtless and selfish and cruel, and the worst part of it is that Ben doesn’t look down.

 Luke is horrified and Ben doesn’t understand why. Snoke has been whispering in Ben’s ears for a long time, stoking resentment, and a deep desire for superiority, for recognition, for power. Something happens, but the worst part of it is that it’s not the first time, this has been escalating for a long time and it’s become something unrecognizable. Ben has been becoming unreasonable, uncontrollable, and unresponsive to anything Luke has to say, because Luke doesn’t _understand._

 Luke is the Son of Darth Vader, and by all rights could have been _Emperor,_ unequaled, and yet Luke is still at the heart of him a farmboy and a rebel, a Jedi of the people and not of power, a merry and infuriatingly humble and _ridiculous_ old man who talks about love and hope and kindness as though these things have any kind of power. Ben's uncle is completely blind to the possibilities of his birthright!

 However Luke tries – and _oh,_ how Luke tries – he can’t understand Ben’s directionless rage and hunger, which have made him susceptible to Snoke and to fantasies of being a Prince of Darkness, the heir apparent to Darth Vader and a lost empire, great and powerful and glorious.

 This is the difference between good and evil. The fatal flaw of goodness is that goodness stops to consider whether it is wrong, it tries to understand, it tries to compromise, and evil does no such thing. Evil knows that it is right, or, even if it knows otherwise, it doesn’t care.

 Ben makes a desperate appeal to his uncle, hoping to make Luke see _sense._

 But, of course, Ben is being unreasonable. He’s near incoherent. He’s talking worse than nonsense, he’s talking _evil_ , of a world in which people are no better than things. And Luke can have none of it.

 But… but… oh, hell… Luke can’t give up on his nephew. He didn’t give up on his father, who committed unspeakable evil, and he can’t give up on Ben. Not the boy he held as a newborn, not the boy he helped raise alongside Han and Leia, not the boy that he helped teach to fly and fix ships, and not the young man he came to have such _hopes_ for.

 There’s good in him, Luke knows it. He’s seen it.

 Luke will always try. So long as there is a _sliver_ of light and hope, Luke will try. Luke would have tried for a stranger, as he’s done hundreds of times before, and Ben is no stranger. Luke loves Ben with all his breaking heart and he won’t give up, no matter how far lost Ben seems. He doesn't want to believe that he could have failed his nephew so badly. If Luke weren't so horrified, he would be _furious,_ because he didn't come so far for the child he helped raise to throw it all away. In Ben, there is still the capacity to do good, and Luke knows his nephew can still turn back and make things right. 

 Ben will have none of it. The _fool._ The blind, useless, silly, old _fool._ Just like his parents. They refuse to see true power, refuse to seek it, and Ben alone will have the courage, the righteousness, the audacity to seize his inheritance and finish what Anakin Skywalker started. They could do _so much more_ if they weren’t all so weak, so intent on helping every _pathetic life form_ that should just be left to die as it deserves if it can’t help itself.

 The galaxy wouldn’t be in chaos, if not for them. If not for _him_ – his uncle. They have _failed him._ They have failed him time and time again, hoping he wouldn’t realize it, that they’re too weak to do what must be done. He will do what must be done, alone, because they will stop him if he lets them.

 Then the betrayal.

 The _massacre._

 But not yet. Perhaps Ben let Luke think that he’d succeeded in bringing Ben back to the Light. Temporarily. Perhaps Luke thought there was yet time, even after this breaking confrontation, that Ben would seethe in silence as though nothing happened. The important thing is that Luke is absent when his nephew slips out of bed, stalks the night, and lights his blade over a fellow apprentice.

 Luke calls Leia, desperate and afraid and uncertain, because with her he is never alone and something has happened and Ben is her son.

 Oh, _oh,_ this wasn’t how things were supposed to go. The next generation was supposed to be _better_ than them. (What did he do wrong?) The next step out of the darkness and into the light, untainted by the hatred and war of their past. Ben was supposed to be the best of them. Not… not this.

 It’s late, and Leia is half-asleep when she answers the call. The unease seeps through the screen, through a weak and blurred image, as the doubt and horror drips through their connection. She’s never seen Luke so afraid, so unsettled and upset – not in years. He doesn’t know where to begin, because the beginning is in the middle of a long, long fall. (How could they have missed this?) 

  _Something happened,_ Luke tells Leia, wide-eyed and horrified. He looks gaunt, still wet from the rain outside, with lightning flashing behind him in the night. _Something happened to Ben._

 (Or, rightly, Ben happened to something.)

 Luke tells her. Every detail. It was horrible. It, _oh Leia…_ But there’s still light in Ben, he _knows_ there is. Ben is a Jedi like his mother and uncle before him. Ben is family. Leia’s son; Luke’s son in all but name. He’s not giving up on Ben. He would never give up on Ben, he swears, because he loves Ben like he loves Leia – more than his own life. Ben might be lost, but Luke will not let him walk away. Luke will bring him _home_ again.

 And it’s in the middle of this call when the screams start.

 “Luke, what was that?” Leia demands. She’s awake now. She can feel the sharp fear, the terror in the night, from halfway across the galaxy.

 The _rage._

 Luke isn’t looking at Leia anymore. He doesn’t know. He _does_ know. He’s already running. The call breaks. The last thing Leia sees and hears is Luke’s terrified, horrified face and a scream through the rain – a crack of lightning and he’s gone. Lost. Halfway across the galaxy.

 She can feel still the fear, distant and dying, slipping between her fingers like sand.

 (After, when it is over, when they are gone… she remembers this. She _hopes._ She can bring them home again, she knows it. She can _bring him home again._ She need only try. Like Luke before her, with Darth Vader before Ben. Vader, a man infinitely more evil than her beloved, too-powerful boy, came back to the light long enough to save her brother. Leia believes in Luke. Leia believes in Ben. And she loves them both, more than anything, except perhaps Han. She will try.)

 The boy that used to be Ben is a grown man now. Older than Luke was when he first set out into the stars, as old as Luke was when he fought Darth Vader. All Luke could see was the boy, but the man he meets now is unfamiliar and monstrous, a man out of all control, all spitting rage and righteous hatred.

 Luke is betrayed by a man who screams _betrayal_ at him, for a crime so unfathomable and unreasonable that Luke can’t even name it. They could have done better, perhaps, by the boy named Ben, but they did not do badly. They couldn’t have dreamed of doing anything worth this.

 A series of petty offenses is what broke Ben. Only Snoke listened.

 There’s a chasm in Luke’s New Jedi Order, a long time in the making. Not just of Ben’s making, of Ben’s resentment and challenge, but of Snoke’s as well. (After all, why trust in a Skywalker? They’re powerful, but unstable. Emotional. Weak. There’s more than one potential Jedi to call to the darkness.) The New Jedi Order has been breaking apart, and now it splits harshly between an absolute light and dark. It will not let Luke Skywalker deal in clouds of grey this time. 

 Ben is surrounded by the apprentices, anxious or furious, righteous or afraid, who will become the Knights of Ren. Not many, but more than enough.

 Luke arrives on the scene of a battle that has already been lost in his absence. Children. Adolescents. Adults, young and old. Those who had come to Luke for help, or to help others. Struck down in the storm and left to be swallowed by the mud.  An older woman, with grown children, who was strong in the Force and steady-minded, with her eyes now empty and unseeing. An adolescent boy, delighted by everything, with his small hands still reaching for his lightsabre to defend himself, one that wouldn’t do more than deliver a sunburn, with his chest slashed apart.

 Friends turned on friends. Apprentice on apprentice. Join or die. The New Jedi.

 Dead.

 Dying.

 Standing in the middle of it all is Ben.

 His lightsaber is still in his hand, gleaming off the rain and the blood, steaming with a crackling hiss. A boy in front of him falling to its knees, and to the ground at her feet. One of _so many._

 “Ben, what have you _done?!”_

 “ _You_ brought it to this!”

 Then the fight.

 Except Luke can’t fight. These are his students. This is still his nephew. He all but raised so many of them. He believed in his father, of all people, through irredeemable evil, and… he must believe in his nephew. He must believe the boy he loves is still in this man who can still turn back. (If he has failed everyone so badly, perhaps he deserves to join the bodies.) He cannot lose himself to the fury and horror. 

 Except he can’t not. Oh, the _bodies._

 Except he must, because he can’t falter here. He can’t do any less than try to reach out and demand retribution, regret, and redemption. He’s Luke Skywalker and he has always believed in light. Always believed in responsibility and love. He can’t give up on goodness or he wouldn’t be Luke Skywalker. He doesn’t-

 He can’t-

  _Oh._

 This can’t be happening. He _never could have imagined-_

 Between the blood and the sinking bodies, the rain and the mud and the lightning, and the gleam and hiss of Ben and Luke’s lightsabers in the storm… the fight. Except Luke can’t fight. It’s a disaster. It’s rage and grief and evil at its worst. It’s pathetic. It’s twisted faces and screaming and tears. It’s barely a fight. It’s a tragedy over the still-warm bodies of a massacre. Betrayal.

 Perhaps there’s regret in Ben. Perhaps there’s remorse. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to go like this, to go so far, to get so out of hand when he began this. Perhaps there’s horror at what he’s done, but he blames it on Luke Skywalker – who failed him, who failed them all. The man that used to be the boy who loved Luke Skywalker, who looked up to him in everything, won’t take the responsibility of what he’s done. No, this is _all Luke’s fault._ If Luke weren’t so soft, so weak, it never would have _come to this!_

 (If there is one thing to be said for Darth Vader, it’s that he claimed his crimes. His reasons varied, if there were any substantial reasons at all, but he claimed him. He remembered every horror and did not flinch in the face of it, but owned what he had done with certainty, if not pride. Because, in the end, that was all there was.)

 “Stop this, Ben!”

 “Begging? _Begging?!_ IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?”

 “…Please, Ben. Stop.”

 “WHY?”

 After the bellow, a sweeping hand flies over the swath of furious destruction, gesturing towards unforgiveable offenses. “You were always trying to stop me!” A clenched fist, as steam burns off the lightsaber, as smoke spirals up towards the lightning. “Always holding me back! _Keeping me from what I could become!”_

 “Ben…”

 “HOW COULD YOU? YOU’RE _WEAK_ AND _SELFISH._ A FOOL. A FOOL PRETENDING TO BE JEDI, TOO SCARED TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE.” An accusing finger, pointed with righteous fear and rage and horror. _“YOU DID THIS! NOT ME!”_

  _“No,”_ Luke says. It’s not true.

 It can’t be true.

 “I’m only doing what had to be done,” Ben says, and perhaps he’s not even speaking to his uncle anymore, but to himself. Convincing himself. There’s a flicker of fear on his face, for a second, as he looks down at the blood and the mud at his feet, true and deep and it makes him looks years younger.

 A flicker of hope rises in Luke in answer.

  **“Ben,”** he says.

 A last, desperate, croaked appeal. Because Ben is powerful, too powerful, willing to do terrible things and wreak endless destruction all around to manage them. Supported by his turned Jedi, who are watching this tragic confrontation from a distance. And, in his heart, Luke doesn’t know if he could ever kill his nephew. Not even now.

 In that one, pathetic word is all the hope and love that Luke put in his nephew. The boy who was meant to be the best of them, to be better than all of them. Better than him. The boy who, in Luke’s loving eyes, was once the brightest light to ever shine in the galaxy, who was born singing in the Force. Who carried all their hopes of peace, an end to the wars that had lasted for all their lives. Luke’s hope. Leia’s hope. Han’s hope.

 In that one, hoarse word is all the hope and love and desperation that was put in _Father, please._ The same hope and love and calling that felled Darth Vader at the final second, that brought a monster back to the light just long enough to save them all.

  _You can still turn back._

_It’s never too late to turn back._

 Ben’s eyes go wild, yellowish, and he raises his blade. It hisses with him:

 “Don't say  _my name.”_

 

 ~

 

 Can you call it a fight if one side can’t fight back? It might have been called a massacre, a murder among many others that day, if Luke hadn’t lived. If Luke hadn’t run.

 He barely escapes with his life.

 In the end, he has to run, because it’s fight or flight, and he can’t fight. If there is anything left in Luke Skywalker when love and righteous anger fails, then it is _live._ Retreat. Live. Live to fight and love another day. He’s a son of a Rebellion, and perhaps the Force is whispering over the pounding in his ears: _survive, survive, survive._

  _You are the last Jedi._

_Yet again._

_You must live._

 It will settle for nothing less. So, Luke lives. Injured, alone, soaked with mud and blood and exhaustion. It was all he could do to get away. He can’t even stand. He flies away and feels unsettled in his own, burned skin. He can’t comprehend what just happened. The screams. The bodies. Those _eyes._

 His hands are shaking, his right is broken, and his cracked lightsaber clatters to the floor as he chokes back tears and vomit. He can’t pick it up again, he can’t bear to look at it anymore. He can’t see anything, black curling at the edges of his vision. He can barely move, he’s shaking so badly. He’s losing blood. His chest is seizing. _Those eyes._

 Luke lives, if barely.

 He knows this because nothing could hurt so much in death.

 

 ~

 

 So, Luke lives, if barely. He escapes, but barely.

 The first thing to do is recover. He can do nothing while he is still broken. He must find somewhere far away, where Snoke can’t find him, and pull the pieces of himself back together, in more ways than one. Ben very nearly killed him. (Snoke has taken Ben’s failure badly – the first of what will be _many_ failures laid against Ben to keep the man under heel, because if the man grows too arrogant, then he might become ambitious. Snoke will control the uncontrollable or die trying.)

 (Snoke will, actually, die trying.)

 Luke must find somewhere where his nephew cannot find him.

 Luke was born to war. He was born in a galaxy controlled by a corrupt and terrible Empire, a galaxy fighting back, and falling back into it now would be enough to break a lesser man. He should have seen this before. The war that was coming. It never left.

 Old bolt holes remain. Old hide outs. Old friends.

 Luke is on the other side of the galaxy to his closest friends, to Leia’s growing Resistance, and is too weak to reach them. One of the first acts of the First Order, as it finally grows confident enough to step forward and challenge the light, is to hunt down and kill Luke Skywalker. The last Jedi cannot be allowed to live. Snoke won’t leave even this one sliver of light in the galaxy. If the First Order is to remake the Empire, to succeed where the Empire failed to last forever, they must kill all those who ended it, beginning with Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi.

 Luke is vulnerable. Luke is deeply injured and weak. Luke is _alone._ They must kill him now and they know it, and Snoke alternates between holding Ben painfully close and throwing him after his uncle. Luke will die. They will waste no resource in seeing it done.

 Except… that’s exactly what they do… waste resources. Luke is injured and weak and alone and broken-hearted, but he’s been many of those things before and he lived. Darth Vader couldn’t catch Luke Skywalker when Luke was still a farmboy who occasionally held his lightsaber upside-down. He was a rebel; he was one of _the_ rebels. He’s now a Jedi Master and the last Jedi. They can’t catch him.

 There are close calls, yes, but there are always close calls. What would running be without them? Luke runs until even the First Order is forced to give up, and turn its eye on the rest of the galaxy, unable to ignore the Resistance snapping at their heels. They lose him.

 And Luke… staying lost is more tempting now than it has ever been before. He won’t, but… he wants to. Oh, he _wants_ to.

 Luke hides, slowly healing, as he really can’t while running for his life, and he has no idea what to do about a heart that feels shattered. He’s old, healing takes longer than it used to, so he has time to think – too much time. Over and over, Luke has to ask himself where he went wrong. He failed. _He failed._ His own nephew, the boy he loved more than anything, and he failed. (By all rights he should have been one of those bodies on the ground.) He must have gone wrong somewhere. But where?

 How can he go back to Leia like this? He barely has the strength to stand. How can he explain this when he failed her so badly? He failed _everyone._ He had neither the strength to take Ben down or turn him back. He doesn’t even know where he went wrong. In everything? What does he do? What _can_ he do?

 There’s nothing he could do that could possibly _fix_ this.

 Perhaps he’s already met his nephew again, except the creature he met… that couldn’t have been Ben. Not that furious man in the terrible mask, with that hideous red lightsaber. That unstable monster.

 Luke has been running. And Kylo Ren has been chasing.

 Luke has _tried._ Time and time again. Barely escaping with his life from the boy he raised and loved – now a man, now a monster. It was an endless, exhausting, broken chase. Every attempt at speaking to Ben has failed. Every attempt to fight back has failed. (Luke's broken heart is not in them.) Everything has failed.

 He can’t go back.

 So, he goes forward. The only way left is forward. Slowly, still hobbling, but forward. He’s on the other side of the galaxy by now, far away and half lost, but there must be something out there to help him. The Force… it will guide him. The Force will have answers. He has to trust it.

 He can’t trust himself.

 Luke searches and makes himself lost. Still injured, still healing. Piece by piece, system by system, he follows the Force, evading his nephew and Snoke and the First Order. He finds lost worlds and lost places, but never what to tell Han and Leia when he sees them again. (Leia knows, but not everything, not the details of that night.) He will find redemption somehow, somewhere, for this failure. It’d be easier if he had any idea what it looked like.

 He leaves a map. He sends it out piece and piece, system by system. Carefully, with sorrow and love, a map in many pieces towards home. For Han. For Leia. In the hope that if he truly loses himself, anyone who needs him again will find him.

 Sometimes, out in the dark of space, he can feel Leia searching. He can feel Leia calling to him, past the terrible shadow of Snoke, and the seething wreck now called Kylo Ren.

 Past the stars, Leia calls to him.

  _Luke? Where are you?_

_Lost._

_I’ll find you._

_Don’t._

_Come home._

_I’m sorry, Leia. I can’t. I’m so sorry._

_…I know._

_…_

_…_

_…I love you, Leia._

_I know. Don’t stay lost forever, Luke._

 He calls back to her because he can do no less. Not always, but when he hears her. With Leia, he is never alone, but he can’t come back. Not yet. The Force is pulling him away, avoiding capture, from system to system, planet to planet – chasing memories. Chasing history. Chasing answers lost to both.

 Chasing healing. Chasing forgiveness.

 He failed. There’s so much blood on his hands. There was always blood on his hands – thousands of voices screamed and were silence with the Death Star, and so many more followed – but even a single drop more would have been too much, and now his hands are permanently drenched, even while dry. His right is stripped to metal, the bare bones of him, and sometimes he catches his own haunted eye in the reflection.

 He was supposed to be _better than that._

 They both were, him and Ben.

 Halfway across the galaxy, he can feel Leia’s pain, the growing war. He knows she can feel his; he knows she loves him; he knows this is why she hasn’t called him back yet, not really. Always prepared to fight the war all by herself if she had to. He should go back, but what can he do? He was weak. He tried. He failed.

 What does Luke Skywalker do when he isn’t enough?

 Somehow, _somehow,_ Luke loved his father. He didn’t love Darth Vader, and he only knew Anakin Skywalker in the stories, passed around the galaxy, passed down by his aunt and uncle from his grandmother. But he loved his father anyway. The good in him that was still there. He still does.

 The warmth of the Force, the memories of his father, all his faith and love… reveal nothing. They turn cold and clouded in his grasp.

 Luke loved his nephew. Somehow, _somehow,_ he still does.

 It wasn’t enough.

 

 ~

 

 The islands of Ahch-To. The first Jedi Temple.

 The Force has taken him to a rock in the middle a thrashing sea, where a village of caretakers looks after an empty tomb, and an ancient tree holds a small shelf of books that are long-since falling apart. Luke opens them, but they aren’t even legible. He spreads his metal fingers over the ancient pictures, but time has washed the details of the memories away and all that remains is the hum of the Force.

 There are no answers. If this distant planet was ever the bright center of the universe, the universe has long since moved far, far away.

 There’s a temple of light, and beside it is a dark pit that calls to him. He ignores it. It’s ancient and hungry, but so are a great many things, and Luke has faced many of them before. He’s spent too long running to find solace at the bottom of some uppity hole. He’s done that already, at least once, he’s fairly sure.

 There are no answers down there, he knows. There never is. There’s nothing down there that he can’t find in himself, if he looks long enough, and either way there’s no guarantee of answers.

 There are no answers in the temple either, he realizes. There’s nothing up there but a history that’s long since been washed smooth. The temple is a hollow place, once home to the things that were actually important, the people, who have long since passed away and become one with the Force. It’s a lonely, wearying place, and Luke feels like an intruder, an impostor, in its empty halls.

 He settles in the balance, in the space between these places.

 There are no answers on Ahch-To, but there is peace. There is life. Countless chaotic details that have come into a balance that hasn’t had cause to shift in thousands of years.

 There’s the sea, unfathomable and wild. The great provider. The storm maker. It slams against the beaten sides of the island. It laps gently over pebbled shores. It goes on endlessly. Deep and shallow, peaceful and wild, shapeless, everything at once. Unconcerned. Unbreakable.

 There was a time when Luke had never dreamed of seeing so much water. The son of a freed slave, who was the son of a freed slave, stranded in the wastes. He’d never known so much blue existed in the whole galaxy.

 Nor so much green. There’s the grass, the plants, growing on the harsh rocks and steep hills. Tenacious. Clutching to the dirt, moving with the wind, stretching down and up. Ahch-To teems with life. Moss clings to every rock. The little, aquatic bird-like creatures get into _everything._ Flowers reach out towards the twin suns, which are a small familiarity, a small comfort, in an alien place. The suns set like Tatooine’s did over the Dune Sea, and Luke could watch them forever.

 There is a place for a wanderer to hide here. To heal.

 The Force has guided him here, the last Jedi to the very beginning. Where the Force was first known to be made real. He will trust in the Force as he cannot trust in himself. He has lost himself as far as he could. If there are answers, they are here, at the end and beginning of everything. He will find them, and the strength to stand again, in more ways than one.

 

 ~

 

 A girl comes.

 She climbs to the height of the island, where Luke watched the suns rise this morning and not come down. He heard the ship, in meditation, and stood to watch the ship land. _He knows that ship._

 He waits. Frozen. Uncertain. He waits for her.

 Who has found him? Friend or foe?

 He looks out to the sea, to the Force, and all but demands to know who she is.

  _The answer,_ the sea replies.

 The girl, who is really a young woman, reaches him. Luke turns to look at her, but he still doesn’t recognize her. He doesn’t know her. A perfect stranger. And she doesn’t know him, not really, though there’s hope on her face as she looks at him.

 She doesn’t say anything. She holds something old to him – a lightsaber. One that Luke Skywalker hasn’t seen in a long, long time. His _father’s_ lightsaber. He thought it was lost forever.

 Luke takes it, carefully, in his right hand.

 From metal to metal rings a story, fresh and jagged, over long since smoothed layers of old stories, the opposite of the empty temple and the old island and the hollow tree. A new story. Full of fight and desperation and… furious protection and hope… like Luke hasn’t known in a long, long time.

 In it: a boy, holding it with a confidence he doesn’t feel, against a great and terrible shadow that’s had him under its thumb all his life. _COME GET IT,_ he shouts, against his fear. To save someone important. The only thing he has. Determination. Terror. _Pain._

 In it: a girl, this girl. It calls to her. She calls to it. _Wake up,_ something says, whispering through the metal of this old, old thing. _I don’t want to,_ she tells it. But she does. And then she can never sleep again.

 In it: a message. A direct message in the metal, imbued at a knowing touch. Grief. Desperate and overwhelming grief. Need. Hope.

  _Come home, Luke,_ Leia’s voice whispers. _You’re our only hope._

 Luke looks at the young woman.

 “Who are you?” he says.

 She’s shaking. She shines, with hope and fear.

 “Rey,” she says. “My name is Rey. And I need your help.”

 She speaks, she explains, she tells her story – which isn’t the whole story, Luke can tell, but it’s too much. Luke listens, because he can do nothing else. He did nothing else.

 Luke… Luke had _no idea_ that things were so bad. That things had come to this. That things had gotten out of hand so quickly _again._ On Ahch-To, he has healed and searched for answers and strength and… the Republic is dead. Han is dead. Leia can do no more alone. She needs him.

 She’s not the only one.

 “There’s something inside me,” Rey says, at the end of it all, and there is such fear in her eyes, and she’s shaking still, like she hasn’t slept in days. “Something that’s always been there, asleep. But now it’s awake, and it won’t… I can’t… I don’t know how to control it. I can't _sleep_ anymore.”  

 There’s such hope in her eyes.

 “I don’t know what to do,” she says. “Can you help me?”  

 The galaxy needs Luke Skywalker again.

 He will come, because he can do nothing less, because his sister needs him, because she’s finally calling him home. When Leia Organa calls for help across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker will come. But he knows he’ll fail. He’s found no answers. Though he can finally stand again, he’s found no greater strength. He can’t defeat Kylo Ren. He can’t bring Ben back to the light.

 He wasn’t enough. He’ll only fail them all again.

 

 ~

 

 If the lesson here to be learned, as in another tale, as seen in Rey’s eyes as she shuts the door of the Millennium Falcon on Kylo Ren, who refused to be saved, is that some people cannot be saved… that sometimes you must close the door to save yourself and the people you care about… that lesson can still be learned.

 Luke teaches Rey his lessons, inspired long ago, but refined in his healing and meditation and search for answers. That the Force belongs to no one. That the Jedi of the Republic-that-became-the-Empire were corrupt and blind, by the end. He teaches her to control her power, as best she can, to hone it, to use her anger and frustration. And because Rey seems determined to seize shadows by their throats, he tells her about love and hope and kindness.

 How… in a universe so deliberately set up to be cruel… the most rebellious thing you can do is love… and be kind.

 But he tells her how he failed, as well. How everything he has to teach her wasn’t enough. Perhaps, just perhaps, she can succeed where he failed, but Luke won’t throw a single young woman against Kylo Ren, against the First Order, against Snoke, and tell her to kill them all. He won't send this child to solve all the problems of his past. That was more or less what happened to him and, frankly, it didn’t work.

 It seems hopeless.

 But the thing about teaching is that the teacher learns too. The master teaches the apprentice, and the apprentice teaches the master in turn. Learning doesn’t stop. So, here is what Luke and Rey teach each other: to give up. Together, they learn to give up.

 Sometimes, though we hope for the better, though we fantasize about people seeing the light, about coming back to us, it isn’t to be. Luke, who loved and was betrayed, and Rey, who was abandoned but still waited, learn to give up.

 Luke learns to give up on the man who was once the boy called Ben. Love wasn’t enough this time, to call a loved one back to the light. But love can be enough to protect the family he has left. Love can be enough to fight anyway, even though it hurts every step of the way. He can still fight the First Order, even if he can’t fight Kylo Ren, who has murdered countless people and stood aside the First Order destroyed planets and killed countless more. He doesn’t have to forgive Ben. He _shouldn’t._ He won’t. He can love himself, everything he stands for, and everyone else enough to hate his nephew. 

 It's not too late to do something. Never too late to turn back. Luke is old, and tired, but he's still kicking. He made a mistake, and he can do something about it. 

 Good doubts, good is forgiving, but lines must be drawn, and Ben can’t keep on crossing them.

 (In the end, it turns out that Luke Skywalker can fight Kylo Ren, despite the scars and wounds of the betrayal that yet linger. For his lost students. For his beliefs. For his sister and his friend, he can fight Kylo Ren. If his nephew won’t answer remorse’s calling himself, then Luke will make him answer for what he’s done, for all the people Luke failed in not stopping Kylo Ren before. Perhaps he did fail his nephew, but Ben failed him too. The boy became a man, who chose his path every step of the way. Luke isn’t responsible for Kylo Ren’s choices. He will stand by Leia, and they will fight together again.)

 Sometimes you don't have to forgive someone. You worked too hard to love yourself and to love all you stand for enough to hate them. No matter who they are. 

 (Kylo Ren has changed too. Gone is the young man who dreamed of bloody inheritance. Here, the apprentice has plotted, has slain the master and blamed one of the Jedi he’s chased, and seized power for himself. He’s beholden to no one any longer. No one can stop him any longer, no one can hold him back or hold him down. It’s time to let the past die. To create something new, free of all the mistakes of the past. He will raze it all if he has to. Anyone who stands in his way. No matter who they are.)

 Rey already knows that Kylo Ren is a monster. He kidnapped her, he tortured her, he tried to _force his way into her head._ He showed her the ways of his Force when he took her by the throat, cracked open her head, and threw her headfirst into a pit of wild rage and seething darkness, and she had to crawl out on her own strength and Luke Skywalker's lessons on kindness. She watched Kylo Ren kill his own father, Han Solo, a gruff and flawed but ultimately kind man, who was willing to forgive his son anything, who already gave him a chance to come home. Han Solo came _back_ for him. Rey would have done _anything_ for a father like that. 

 Rey watched Kylo Ren rip into Finn, who came _back_ for her, like no one had before. Kylo Ren nearly killed a bright man, who used to be a Stormtrooper and wanted nothing more than not to kill, to be safe, and for her to be safe too. She won’t forgive Kylo Ren. He’s had too many chances to come back, to turn away, and he’s burned every one of them. Conflicted or not, he wouldn’t come back for her if she wanted him to, and she doesn’t. Finn, who was stolen from a family he'll never know and raised to be a Stormtrooper, fled the First Order and all its crimes, and fought back despite all his fears. Kylo Ren has no excuse. The least of Kylo Ren's crimes is that he stood aside and let the First Order do terrible things. 

 It’s here that Luke and Rey argue the most, but Luke sees through Rey’s new eyes and she’s right. And in Luke turning his back on his family, for the sake of himself and his sister and the Resistance, on giving up absurd hopes in the face of how that family has betrayed him… Rey learns to give up on her parents. She waited and hoped for _years –_ years stuck on a sandy rock all alone – but loyalty wasn’t enough. She loved and she hoped, and they never came back.

 Rey is a no one, from nowhere, but she can become someone, someone who doesn’t wait, someone who can save a galaxy, or at least a little bit of it. Her family abandoned her, but she can make her own family. A better one. One that comes _back_ for her like she would for them. She can be a Jedi, like no one before her, like Luke before her, like someone _after_ her. She won’t wait any longer, stranded. Rey will finally walk the stars and make her own answers.

 She’s awake, and she can never sleep again. There’s no going back.

 So, they begin again. Time to try. Again, for Luke. For the first time, for Rey. They can do nothing less.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A [post on tumblr](https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/169106703993) to Rec & Reblog, if you like. 
> 
> The [rough copy of this fic on tumblr,](https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/169076587308/alright-so-thinking-about-improving-character) if anyone's curious. 
> 
> And a fic rec: [**Leia Organa is Not a Myth**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6617341) \- A fic for Leia, a character study using propaganda, written after TFA.


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